Scalable Calculation of Logical Masking Effects for Selective Hardening Against Soft Errors

Selective hardening aims at achieving maximal soft error rate reduction at reasonable cost by applying hardening techniques to most susceptible circuit nodes only. Logical, electrical and latching-window masking effects must all be considered when calculating the susceptibility of circuit nodes to soft errors. We introduce a scalable selective hardening method based on an approximate calculation of fault detection probabilities at the nodes. Error probability reduction comparable to that obtained by the exact BDD-based algorithm (which is not scalable) can be achieved by setting an over-ambitious optimization target. The run times are negligible even for industrial multiple-million-gates circuits. Existing approaches for calculating electrical and latching-window masking can be readily incorporated into the framework.

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